Another new Mooney Owner

[FlyingAggie]

[FlyDave]

Alan - NICE PLANE!!!

Your gonna have a BLAST with it!!!

[KSMooniac]

Congrats again!  I might stop by next week (23rd, perhaps) if you're available and not flying!  I'm anxious to see it and see your excrement-eatin' grin in person.

[RJBrown]

Sounds like a great plane!!!

I miss my turbo. She looked a lot like this one.

[Parker_Woodruff]

Looks great!!!

[FlyingAggie]

Don Kaye, a very experienced Mooney flight instructor (http://www.donkaye.com/Dons_Homepage...struction.html ) delivered the plane to me on Tuesday and he did it quickly.  Take a look at the tracks from SJC-MLF-LMO.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N262MB.

Don said this was one of the fastest M20K he has flown! (He probably tells all new Mooney owners that ;-) but I loved hearing it!) He actually made the trip to CO in the Mooney in less time than his return trip to on a Southwest Airlines.

My instructor, who has almost as much experience as Don, is Cleon Biter from Longmont, CO. Wednesday, I spent the entire day with Cleon. We did a four hour ground school in the morning. We then made two flights of 1.7 hrs and 1.6 hrs. On the first flight Cleon just let me play for a while doing turns and getting used to the controls.. He demonstrated setting the power by using the JPI to monitor TiT and watching the hottest cylinder, and how to use the mixture, cowl flaps and speed to control the engine temperatures. Followed by some slow flight, a stall and then back to LMO where I made my first landing. It was not my best, but certainly not my worst either.

Next flight we did stalls and slow flight and practiced putting the plane in landing configuration and then we did three landings. Rather than just staying in the traffic pattern, Cleon has had me take off, leave the pattern, go into cruise configuration, head to a close by airport, plan my slow up, configure for landing, and land to a full stop. I am learning that landings are much easier if you use the right power settings in the pattern and trim, trim, trim and trim!

We flew again early Thursday morning for 1.2 hrs going LMO--GXY--FNL--LMO. I felt good about all three landings. We did a take off without flaps. Cleon throws in some systems work in between airports. I have learned to use Shadin Fuel Flow, JPI 700 and the basics of the KFC200. So I now have 4.5 hrs and about half way through the 10 hrs insurance requirement.

I have learned to use the fuel flow to make course leaning adjustments and then fine tune with the JPI. I feel like a student pilot all over again!

I still have so much more to learn, but I am feeling pretty good about my progress. The snow storm today is interrupting the flying for a couple of days, but I plan to use the down time to read through the Garmin 530W and SANDEL Manuals.

[mooneygirl]

What a happy happy time Alan. I remember the dual I received when I got my E model.  It does feel like you are a student again, because we are!  Our airplanes do best when we fly them by the numbers. I also remember how hard it was to get slowed down!  Speed speed speed!  Have a wonderful time.